A Confession by Leo Tolstoy Ch 2 of 16

Some day I will narrate the touching and instructive history of my life during t
hose ten years of my youth. I think very many people have had a like experience.
With all my soul I wished to be good, but I was young, passionate and alone, co
mpletely alone when I sought goodness. Every time I tried to express my most sin
cere desire, which was to be morally good, I met with contempt and ridicule, but
as soon as I yielded to low passions I was praised and encouraged.
Ambition, love of power, covetousness, lasciviousness, pride, anger, and revenge
--were all respected.
Yielding to those passions I became like the grown-up folk and felt that they ap
proved of me. The kind aunt with whom I lived, herself the purest of beings, alw
ays told me that there was nothing she so desired for me as that I should have r
elations with a married woman: 'Rien ne forme un juene homme, comme une liaison
avec une femme comme il faut'.
Another happiness she desired for me was that I should become an aide-de-camp, a
nd if possible aide-de-camp to the Emperor. But the greatest happiness of all wo
uld be that I should marry a very rich girl and so become possessed of as many s
erfs as possible.
I cannot think of those years without horror, loathing and heartache. I killed m
en in war and challenged men to duels in order to kill them. I lost at cards, co
nsumed the labour of the peasants, sentenced them to punishments, lived loosely,
and deceived people. Lying, robbery, adultery of all kinds, drunkenness, violen
ce, murder--there was no crime I did not commit, and in spite of that people pra
ised my conduct and my contemporaries considered and consider me to be a compara
tively moral man.
So I lived for ten years.
During that time I began to write from vanity, covetousness, and pride. In my wr
itings I did the same as in my life. to get fame and money, for the sake of whic
h I wrote, it was necessary to hide the good and to display the evil. and I did
so. How often in my writings I contrived to hide under the guise of indifference
, or even of banter, those strivings of mine towards goodness which gave meaning
to my life! And I succeeded in this and was praised.
At twenty-six years of age I returned to Petersburg after the war, and met the w
riters. They received me as one of themselves and flattered me. And before I had
time to look round I had adopted the views on life of the set of authors I had
come among, and these views completely obliterated all my former strivings to im
prove--they furnished a theory which justified the dissoluteness of my life.
The view of life of these people, my comrades in authorship, consisted in this:
that life in general goes on developing, and in this development we--men of thou
ght--have the chief part; and among men of thought it is we--artists and poets--
who have the
greatest influence. Our vocation is to teach mankind. And lest the simple questi
on should suggest itself: What do I know, and what can I teach? it was explained
in this theory that this need not be known, and that the artist and poet teach
unconsciously. I was considered an admirable artist and poet, and therefore it w
as very natural for me to adopt this theory. I, artist and poet, wrote and taugh
t without myself knowing what. For this I was paid money; I had excellent food,
lodging, women, and society; and I had fame, which showed that what I taught was
very good.
this faith in the meaning of poetry and in the development of life was a religio
n, and I was one of its priests. To be its priest was very pleasant and profitab
le. And I lived a considerable time in this faith without doubting its validity.
But in the second and still more in the third year of this life I began to doub
t the infallibility of this religion and to examine it. My first cause of doubt
was that I began to notice that the priests of this religion were not all in acc
ord among themselves. Some said: We are the best and most useful teachers; we te
ach what is needed, but the others teach wrongly. Others said: No! we are the re
al teachers, and you teach wrongly. and they disputed, quarrelled, abused, cheat
ed, and tricked one another. There were also many among us who did not care who
was right and who was wrong, but were simply bent on attaining their covetous ai
ms by means of this activity of ours. All this obliged me to doubt the validity
of our creed.
Moreover, having begun to doubt the truth of the authors' creed itself, I also b
egan to observe its priests more attentively, and I became convinced that almost
all the priests of that religion, the writers, were immoral, and for the most p
art men of bad, worthless character, much inferior to those whom I had met in my
former dissipated and military life; but they were self-confident and self-sati
sfied as only those can be who are quite holy or who do not know what holiness i
s. These people revolted me, I became revolting to myself, and I realized that t
hat faith was a fraud.
But strange to say, though I understood this fraud and renounced it, yet I did n
ot renounce the rank these people gave me: the rank of artist, poet, and teacher
. I naively imagined that I was a poet and artist and could teach everybody with
out myself knowing what I was teaching, and I acted accordingly.
From my intimacy with these men I acquired a new vice: abnormally developed prid
e and an insane assurance that it was my vocation to teach men, without knowing
what.
To remember that time, and my own state of mind and that of those men (though th
ere are thousands like them today), is sad and terrible and ludicrous, and arous
es exactly the feeling one experiences in a lunatic asylum.
We were all then convinced that it was necessary for us to speak, write, and pri
nt as quickly as possible and as much as possible, and that it was all wanted fo
r the good of humanity. And thousands of us, contradicting and abusing one anoth
er, all printed and wrote--teaching others. And without noticing that we knew no
thing, and that to the simplest of life's questions: What is good and what is ev
il? we did not know how to reply, we all talked at the same time, not listening
to one another, sometimes seconding and praising one another in order to be seco
nded and praised in turn, sometimes getting angry with one another--just as in a
lunatic asylum.
Thousands of workmen laboured to the extreme limit of their strength day and nig
ht, setting the type and printing millions of words which the post carried all o
ver Russia, and we still went on teaching and could in no way find time to teach
enough, and were always angry that sufficient attention was not paid us.
It was terribly strange, but is now quite comprehensible. Our real innermost con
cern was to get as much money and praise as possible. To gain that end we could
do nothing except write books and papers. So we did that. But in order to do suc
h useless work and to feel assured that we were very important people we require
d a theory justifying our activity. And so among us this theory was devised: "Al
l that exists is reasonable. All that exists develops. And it all develops by me
ans of Culture. And Culture is measured by the circulation of books and newspape
rs. And we are paid money and are respected because we write books and newspaper
s, and therefore we are the most useful and the best of men." This theory would
have been all very well if we had been unanimous, but as every thought expressed
by one of us was always met by a diametrically opposite thought expressed by an
other, we ought to have been driven to reflection. But we ignored this; people p
aid us money and those on our side praised us, so each of us considered himself
justified.
It is now clear to me that this was just as in a lunatic asylum; but then I only
dimly suspected this, and like all lunatics, simply called all men lunatics exc
ept myself.